14th International Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia

(June 7 – November 23, 2014)

The exhibition presents an architectural narrative based on La Fabrica, RBTA’s well-known headquarters in a former cement factory in Barcelona. The exhibition extends the space far beyond its physical existence in Spain, to consider how it can also exist in other places, most specifically in Venice. Drawing upon past, present, and future simi- larities between Barcelona and Venice, the exhibition will re-imagine La Fabrica as the Venice-based starting point of a communal/individual journey and thought a process that transcends physical and mental frames.

Visitors will enter the exhibition through an anteroom—a reinterpretation of traditional Venetian room. Inside, a sequence of images narrates the physical transformation of La Fabrica, from a polluted cement factory into a design office and residence, inundated with lush gardens. Visitors are invited by a sound to then enter a rotunda where they are surrounded by imagery that maps the transformative design process and principals of RBTA, moving from what Ricardo Bofill refers to as “death to life.” Using 3-D mapping and sound, the visitor is surrounded by an abstract sensorial experience that narrates the progression of RBTA’s design process throughout the past 50 years, looking into the future. The overall experience will communicate RBTA’s narrative of TIME SPACE EXISTENCE through 360o mapping.